Spoiled for choice?

It only seems a few years ago that venue managers complained there was limited choice of ticketing system suppliers, not much difference between them and they weren’t happy with any of them. If you needed a ticket agent, Ticketmaster was ubiquitous. The situation is very different in 2010, with over twice as many suppliers, more agents, different approaches to delivery and more users expressing happiness with some of the systems, and, importantly, suppliers. However, it is necessary for venues to choose carefully, not least because the solutions are different. Some venues now have on-line sales as their primary interest; neglecting to apply equal focus to the box office sales and marketing functionality can be risky: the devil is in the detail.

 Venues now see the customer database at the heart of the ticketing system, joining up with all their customer-facing tools, so they can work smarter to drive their customer relations. The choice of system and supplier makes an enormous difference to this and to the cost, especially compared to agents. Some of the newer suppliers address inter-facing and connectivity as part of their philosophy. Stuart Nicolle, rapidly expanding the tools around Purple Seven’s Vital Statistics, is helping suppliers and users by adding segmentation from customer data and enhanced, highly effective, guided target e- marketing.

IN THE CLOUD

One reason for the growth in suppliers is software ‘in the cloud’, supplied as a service. So newish suppliers such as Ticketsolve from Dublin and Spektrix from London offer pay-as-you-go, externally hosted solutions. I am not being negative to say that this relies very much on where you are located and your broadband connection’s speed and reliability; outside metropolitan centres, in Wales and in Scotland, there are too many examples of slow and even intermittent connections. Ideally a ‘mission-critical’ tool requires a second fail-safe connection using a different backbone, e.g. BT and Virgin cable (less available in rural areas when you need it). Spektrix reports users with 3G dongles achieving good back-up connections, and satellite broadband as an affordable option. And the Ticketsolve system illustrates why it’s important to check out functionality, since its box office front end may work differently from what managers expect.

In these financially challenging times, it is possible to see the initial attraction of ‘pay-as-you-go’ fees, usually as a small percentage, but these soon add up to significant repeating sums. Year on year, they become more expensive than the licence fee systems, though someone else taking care of the servers, the software and the Internet sales connections, setting up seating plans, etc. seems to reassure many venues. Spektrix, now with 37 users, has been one to watch, with some new ideas on user-friendly screen design and great functionality for sales promotions. Managing Director Michael Nabarro is committed to further development. The decision to use i-frames for the web brings flexibility to implementing the online sales process: the ADC Theatre in Cambridge has a web version for ticket sales on the mobile phone.

PRICE-POINT

Also newish is supplier PatronBase from New Zealand, but now with a thriving UK company in Cardiff led by Andrew Thomas, and a list of over 60 users, most recently a clutch of venues in Glasgow which collaborated on a joint procurement process. PatronBase is replicating the Databox culture of the 1990s and continuously adding dynamic functionality to make a difference in marketing, sales, social networking, memberships and loyalty schemes, much appreciated by users ranging from Derby Quad through to the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich and Horsecross Theatre and Concert Hall in Perth. It has an interface with Artifax, its own room booking module, and a fee-free online environment selling seats live off the plan. Customer satisfaction is high.

That the PatronBase price point is low bewilders some prospective purchasers with much larger quotes from other suppliers. But PatronBase is not alone, since Savoy Systems from London, led by Patrick Hort, also aims to deliver a low cost solution, in-venue or externally hosted, with a “why pay more?” attitude. Similar to PatronBase, this is based on a licence fee model and modest annual charges, including online sales. Savoy’s Oscar started out in cinemas but has added more and more venues to its user list, including the Lace Market in Nottingham, Southwark Playhouse, and Oundle Festival.

LARGE SCALE

If those two have a lower-profit ethos, then they share some qualities with Tessitura, still the unique not-for-profit and co-ownership model, which seeks to give the best tools to users at an optimal price. Tessitura might say you “get what you pay for”, and its highly configurable and customisable system does enable users to develop some very clever solutions. The cost has been falling as more and more features are added into core functionality, with prepared modules available. It does seem to be the system of choice for established organisations, with the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester a recent joiner. The Tessitura Network adds an extra dimension for users, with a distinct communal attitude of sharing solutions, centred on the largest user conference in the world.

The principal competition at the larger scale is AudienceView from Toronto, or Blackbaud’s Patron Edge, or ENTA from London. There were real fears that ENTA’s survival was in the balance during the turbulence affecting the Seatem Group earlier this year. However, it has emerged as an arguably safer, if venture capital owned, UK company, though the loss of experienced staff has been of concern to users. ENTA’s core functionality remains strong and fit-for-purpose for many users, including the likes of the Glasgow Concert Halls and the Ravinia Festival in Chicago.

AudienceView has added a huge degree of functionality around its browser-based digital marketing core, especially to drive web sales. Incorporating an internal Content Management System to drive websites, with multiple skins, makes it so much easier for venues to design and deliver effective web presence and optimise their sites for sales. AudienceView seems to meet the needs of users large and small, from Dublin Theatre Festival, to Dramaten, the Royal National Theatre of Sweden in Stockholm, the Norwich Theatre Royal and the NEC Birmingham’s Ticket Factory.

Blackbaud is at a crossroads for some users. Supplying the SRO system from TopTix under the brand name Patron Edge, its current version three is being replaced by version four. While that new system is already released by TopTix in Israel and Europe, Blackbaud is projecting 2011/12 for adding their backwards compatibility, before upgrading clients in the UK. Inevitably some users are not prepared to wait, some going out to tender to select their next generation solution competitively, as the Royal Court Theatre in London has already done.

They can face a bewildering choice, since there are more system suppliers trying to achieve a larger presence. Some venue managers complain of the intensity of the sales pitch. IRIS, which took over Kidlington-based ticketingsolutions, does not seem to have established its place in the market yet, despite signing Wolverhampton Grand Theatre. Nouveau Solutions, whose NEAT brings back the old Royal Shakespeare Company system RITA, paired with Microsoft Dynamix to handle the CRM, seems stalled. One thing is clear: there is not a shared understanding of the functionality requirements to drive CRM into the future, and this is evident in the agency sector.

DINOSAURS?

With the difficulties of the Seatem Group in the UK, the uncertainty in the agency market continues. In some ways this is a dinosaur business model in 2010, but Eventim, See Tickets and others compete with Ticketmaster for a shrinking portion of the market willing to rely on agency services. Ironically, Eventim entered the UK market to increase competition, ushered in by Live Nation. Now Live Nation and Ticketmaster have merged, and Eventim, the dominant player in Germany, has not yet become the third force expected, despite having a powerful suite of software used in continental Europe for those wanting in-house solutions.

While the agency business is highly competitive and sometimes fragile, there is continuing talk of more companies offering ‘ticketing as a service’ agency solutions. Yet the advantage of controlling how you face customers means more venues need their own systems under their control. Look at how the Ambassador Theatre Group and now HQ Theatres are moving to that model. Knowing what model you want is the easy part, choosing the supplier and system is much harder.

The Ticketing Institute 

This week sees the launch of The Ticketing Institute (TTI), a new website designed to help the cultural sector bring in more customers, turn transactions into relationships, and provide up-to-date information on ticketing systems and suppliers. Created and managed by Roger Tomlinson, the site will contain news, advice and information about customer-facing technologies, and include articles, book reviews, training and networking opportunities, case studies and self-help forums. 

In these straitened times, organisations need people to be able to work smarter, be more efficient and minimise costs, so TTI aims to help more people with procurement, especially those with modest budgets. One feature that it offers to those buying new systems is a ‘Functionality Builder’, a tool to enable venues to build detailed functionality specification. This has been beta-tested with the Brighton Dome and Festival, which used it to specify almost 400 points of functionality in its tender process. Carole Britten, Director of Marketing, said: "We needed to be sure potential suppliers understood our needs in detail, since we have complex membership and promotional schemes. The Functionality Builder enabled us to establish the criteria and prioritise them, engaging all our team in reviewing the content live online through its extremely user-friendly interface. Suppliers then matched their responses to our needs, so we were able to easily evaluate them."

The key to success for suppliers, venues and organisations is to match what systems can deliver today with each organisation’s foreseeable requirements. TTI is working with suppliers as partners to ensure that what they can deliver is accurately represented to venues – it aims to become a one-stop-shop, independent and free of bias, to help venues find the right solutions.

W http://www.theticketinginstitute.com